In an 11-year major league career that included all of 562 hits, 16
home runs, 10 stolen bases and a pedestrian .247/.310/.313 batting line —
yet somehow also an All-Star appearance — the limitations of Rocky
Bridges’ ability were dwarfed by a persistence that allowed him to spend
nearly half a century in the game. Armed with a self-deprecating wit,
he was a natural in conveying to impressionable young men the message
that talent and skill alone aren’t sufficient to thrive, that the need
to enjoy the game, to remember that it’s supposed to be fun, is necessary to cope with its ups and downs.As the manager of the Pacific Coast League’s Phoenix Giants from 1974
through 1982, Bridges brought his team through my hometown of Salt Lake
City (host of the Angels and later Mariner affiliates during that
timespan) with regularity, and quips from the eminently quotable skipper
often found their way into The Salt Lake Tribune. The passage
from the Boyd/Harris book, which I stumbled across when I was 13 or 14,
sketched out his back story as a fringe major leaguer, and in the late
1990s, my pal Nick Stone unearthing a used copy of the Jim Bouton-edited
I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad, an anthology whose title and first chapter came from a 1964 Sports Illustrated profile of Bridges
just as he was winding up the first of his 21 seasons piloting a minor
league club. Writer Gilbert Rogin called Bridges “one of the best
stand-up comics in the history of baseball,” and several generations of
scribes who had the fortune to cover him over the years would probably
agree. Rogin’s 3,500-word piece — and just about everything else written
about him over the past sixty-some years — is stuffed with punchline
after punchline from the former Punch-and-Judy hitter.